


ships floating on an empty sea

by lost_decade



Category: Formula 1 RPF, Tennis RPF
Genre: Awkward Conversations, M/M, Rare Pairings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-01-14
Packaged: 2019-03-04 21:37:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13373550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lost_decade/pseuds/lost_decade
Summary: People die in elevators, Grigor is thinking.





	ships floating on an empty sea

**Author's Note:**

> I've been thinking about this pairing for ages. Written (and set) just after the 2017 ATP Finals. 
> 
> Title from Primitive Painters by Felt.

“How fucking long has it been now?” Lewis asks in exasperation, looking at his watch again even though he knows how long it’s been – five minutes longer than the last time he looked. Five minutes ago it had been twenty minutes. Now it’s twenty five and this, this really sucks. He gives up on the pretence that any movement is going to be happening anytime soon and sits down, his back up against the wall and legs stretched out before him. He’d been planning to finish his packing and get an early night before the car comes to take him to Heathrow at 5am. He hadn’t counted on this.

Pulling his phone out from the front pocket of his hoodie he holds it up pointlessly in the air but there’s still no signal.

“They said it would take up to an hour.”

Lewis looks up at his companion, sitting similarly on the floor diagonally opposite him, but with his knees up to his chest.

“They probably don’t even know how long it’s gonna take, man. We could be in here all night.”

“We have a flight to catch in the morning.” _We_. Lewis would rather not think about that. “Yeah, me too.”

It’s not going to take all night. It’s not. Lewis will be complaining to the hotel management if it takes any damn longer than another ten minutes. He looks over at the younger man, who seems very pale even in the low emergency lighting.

People die in elevators, Grigor is thinking. Shit. He remembers that one time he went to Disney with some friends after the Miami Open and tried not to freak out when they dragged him on the Tower of Terror. He should’ve taken the fucking stairs tonight. He leans his head forward onto his knees, taking deep breaths. There’s plenty of oxygen, it’s fine. Even if it’s not fine he’s certainly not going to show how much this is freaking him out to his girlfriend’s ex.

The sound of distant drilling cuts through the silence and Grigor forces himself to look at Lewis because if he doesn’t he’s just going to start jabbing at all the buttons for every floor.

“You’re used to this sort of thing, I guess,” Grigor says, “confined spaces I mean.”

“Yeah I love getting stuck in lifts, I’m having a great time.”

Grigor, uncharacteristically, flips him the finger, rolling his eyes.

“Whenever I’m in an enclosed space I’m normally driving at 200 miles an hour. This—” Lewis gestures at their surroundings “—isn’t exactly thrilling me. Kind of weird though, isn’t it, that the first time we ever meet is like this.”

“It is,” Grigor agrees, studying Lewis’ face carefully. Technically Grigor should have the upper hand here, but it really doesn’t feel that way.

Lewis rests his head against the stainless steel panelling, pulling at the cord on his hoodie. “How is she?” he asks, cautiously. He wonders how much Nicole has told him about their relationship, about where all the cracks came from. He trusts her still, trusts that she would’ve kept certain things to herself even if she has (of course she has) talked about him.

He gets this look at the mention of her name, Grigor, his face sort of softens, the tension seeping away from him. Lewis recognises it, he used to get like that over anyone whose name began with some of those letters too. It's why he couldn't bring himself to say her name just now - it's her name and part _his_ name and Lewis doesn't have either of them anymore.

“Nicole is great, yeah. We're very happy.”

Grigor takes great pride in the statement, Lewis can feel it. “Don't worry, man. We're history, I'm not interested. Not like that.”

Just treat her right. Give her what I couldn't.

“S’great that she met someone” Lewis yawns, glancing around the compartment as if he’s going to find some other exit. “I mean it, I’m glad she’s happy.”

Grigor _is_ convinced that she’s happy, they’ve even talked about getting married next year. There are times he’s thought idly about how he’ll propose to her, some vague idea in his head of taking her out to Varna where he used to go for holidays when he was really young, getting down on one knee on the golden sand. Lewis had proposed, he knows. He knows a little of why they didn’t make it to the church, has guessed some of the rest.

“You still care about her.”

“Yeah, I mean...always.” What’s the point in lying about it. Lewis can win and win and win but he’s always failed to make the people he loves happy. It’s his biggest shortcoming in life and that he still hasn’t figured it out yet torments him sometimes, times like now, when he’s stuck with nowhere to go, faced with a guy who it seems has got it right. Where’s his weak spot, there must be one.

“She cares about you too,” Grigor tells him, because it’s true and he’s not a dick, and talking to Lewis is distracting him from where they actually are.

“Yeah…” Lewis replies. Scant consolation.

It’s a small elevator and Grigor is over six feet tall. His calf presses against Lewis’ thigh, and as they talk, varyingly about racing and tennis and not about Nicole at all really, their bodies relax against each other. Lewis studies the Bulgarian in the dim light, trying not to wonder at the comparisons Nicole has surely made between them both. Tennis isn’t his thing really, he’s caught the occasional grand slam final on TV and let’s not go there with Wimbledon and the whole dress code bullshit, but beyond that… Grigor’s just won a tournament though, he knows. He remembers the news headlines from the previous evening, the clip of him dedicating his win to Nicole. Strange how people’s lives can have such parallels.

The elevator shudders a little, the voice of the same woman they’d spoken to nearly an hour ago now coming through the emergency speaker, telling them it won’t be long now, another ten minutes, maybe fifteen. Lewis sighs dramatically, cursing. Grigor finds strangely that Lewis’ anger calms his nerves.

He’s becoming dangerously bored now though, Lewis, irritated by the lack of progress enough to up the stakes a little.  “So, uh, you know about her then?”

Grigor frowns at him. Tall, dark and handsome has never been Lewis’ type, but his furrowed brow and the thickness of his accent when he replies is undeniably beguiling.

“Do I know about Nicole? Do I know what about Nicole?”

Their eyes meet, the air in the small compartment heavy, Lewis’ gaze loaded as if he’s taken back the upper hand. Grigor doesn’t bite on it in quite the way he’d hoped though, and Lewis isn’t actually going to say it.

“I think you know,” he says instead. As if it really matters. Lewis hadn’t cared that Nicole had female lovers, just as she hadn’t cared that he had male lovers, except for one but he can’t allow himself to think of that now that he’s lost them both. He’s just fishing, that’s all, trying to ascertain if they’re really as serious as he suspects they are.

“You're very like she said you were. Interesting.”

“What did she say?” Lewis can't help himself.

“Just some things.”

It must be lonely, travelling so much, so far from home. Lewis knows that nomadic life, has a sense of how it all works. He'd put money on it that Grigor has someone he turns to when he loses, someone to sweeten the defeat. He wonders who it is and if it's fucked him up the same way his own situation has. He wants to push it just to see but you can’t walk out of an argument when you’re stuck in a lift so maybe it’s not the best idea.

They fall into silence momentarily, voices up ahead somewhere breaking through it. It won’t be too long.

Grigor closes his eyes, talking himself into relaxing, the way he would before a big match, when he’s about to walk out on Centre to face Roger and all he can hear is the nickname in his head, what they always used to call him when he first made it out of the Juniors. Roger had even used it himself once, hand on his cheek in the locker room and lips against his ear, _I hear they’re calling you Baby Fed now._ And Grigor, for all his sins, had slid to his knees and tried to prove that he was more than just hype.

They both stand when finally there’s movement, the carriage rising up jerkily until the elevator grinds to a halt on an actual floor. Lewis looks to his side, pondering how to leave this, in a swift movement pressing his lips to Grigor’s, kissing him hard before drawing back immediately. “Pass that on to Nicole for me would you,” he says just as the doors are prised open.

 


End file.
